3 Things the Best Salespeople Know Before They Make the Call

The days of phoning a busy executive and asking them a bunch of questions to get them to uncover their pain are long over.

Today’s salespeople have to earn trust and gain credibility from the first moment of contact with an executive. The only way to do that is to prove they have done their homework, know and understand what the customer is trying to do, and can add immediate value in a fast knowledge transfer from the first conversation.

3 things the best Salespeople know before they contact an executive:

What the customer is trying to do strategically that will make the salesperson’s offering relevant?

Who in the target customer is most invested in solving the problem?

What they will say to earn the credibility to discuss the strategy, the current risks, and alternatives to mitigate those risks with the executive?

There are two ways to get these types of salespeople representing your company:

You can play the talent lottery and hope to win with a great hire.

You can learn how to build them from the talent you have, or the average sales talent that is a lot easier to find.

The Talent Lottery is a game of chance that is hard to win. Building your own is a matter of creating a repeatable learning process to on-board your new team members and designing a process to share customer-centered information within your team. The latter is a little bit harder at first, but will pay better in the long run than the lottery.